Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2020

ASTROBIOLOGY 11 MAY-JUNE 2020 W hen the next generation of super- telescopes (the Extremely Large Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope first among them) are completed and become operational, it will finally be possible to observe and study the first po- tentially habitable exoplanets directly. For this reason, some teams of astrobiologists are currently engaged in modeling the most A ccording to two Cornell University researchers, fluorescent organisms similar to these could cover the shal- low ocean floors of planets orbiting the habitable zones of some red dwarfs.